Book Review: Homicide Trinity.

Homicide Trinity contained three Nero Wolfe Novellas originally published in magazine form in 1961 and 1962. Below, we take a look at each story.

“Eeny Meeny Murder Mo”

Bertha Aaron, the secretary to the Senior partner in a lawfirm comes to Wolfe’s office because she suspects one of the other partners of colluding with an opposing client against the interests of the firm. Because the opposing client is involved in a divorce case, Archie knows he’ll have a time convincing Wolfe to take the case.

Wolfe doesn’t want the case but finds himself involved when he and Archie return to the office to find Aaron murderered with Wolfe’s discarded necktie. Because it’s Wolfe’s necktie, the onus is on him to beat the police to the solution.

In some ways, this seems a variation on Disguise for Murder with Archie leaving a woman in the office and returning from the plantroom to find her murdered. They were so similar that A&E linked the two episodes for European syndication. Unfortunately, while this story has features, it’s just not as good. Still I’ll give it a

Rating: Satisfactory

“Death of a Demon”

Lucy Hazen shows up at Wolfe’s office and offers him $100 for an hour of his time. She wants to tell Wolfe that she wants to murder her husband and to secure Wolfe’s promise to report it to the police. Wolfe takes her upstairs to show her the orchids and while they’re upstairs, Archie hears on the radio that her husband was shot.

Lucy ends up being arrested and hiring Wolfe to find out who did it. As is the case in the best Wolfe stories, Stout creates a memorable cast of suspects in the case of the murder of the blackmailing husband and Archie finds them all at the scene of the crime looking for the box of blackmail materials.

The characters are solid, particularly for a novella, and Wolfe solves the case in true master detective fashion.

Rating: Very Satisfactory

“Counterfeit for Murder”

A woman named Hattie Anniscomes to Wolfe’s door looking quite disheveled and unlike the high value clients that Wolfe usually pays for and Archie’s not inclined to let her in. However, Archie’s willing to let her see the big guy because Wolfe is under the impression that he’s a sucker for a certain type of woman and Archie thinks it’ll be fun to show Wolfe up.

Hattie has a stack of money that she found in her boarding house which shelters showbiz people whether they can pay their $5 a week rent or not. When Wolfe sends Archie to the boarding house to investigate, they find an undercover female Treasury Agent dead.

The cop-hating Hattie Annis is without a doubt Wolfe’s most interesting client so far. Her speech and personality (she calls Wolfe “Falstaff”) make the story one of the most enjoyable to read.

The mystery isn’t half bad either. Throw in some T-men and the NYPD in a turf war and there are Few Wolfe stories of any length that can beat this one for pure entertainment value.

Rating: Very Satisfactory

The last two stories are simply superb and as good as the vast majority of Wolfe novels. The first one is solid as well and so I’ll give this one a:

Rating: Very Satisfactory.

You can find all the Nero Wolfe books in Kindle, Audiobook, and book form on our Nero Wolfe page.

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